—
On her last night on Omaron, Karen rediscovered the palace hovercar station.
Once again, she suffered the inability to fall asleep. She was set for her return to Earth tomorrow, and she’d yet to tell her sisters about the war of indecision that raged in her head. She justified her cowardice by telling herself she’d much rather enjoy the time left with her sisters and their children. But just like she’d learned in school, the body always knew what was wrong. Always. Even when an individual wasn’t conscious of it yet. The body intrinsically rejected anything harmful to its system. Most times, it had a quick way of showing its objection to foreign matter.
So she supposed her mild insomnia had to do with the fact that her body knew she was full of bullshit.
Instead of paying Zezvar a visit, she followed a new path, one she remembered taking with her sisters on their trip to the main city, Onhya. As she walked, she recalled her encounter with the violet-eyed man the night before. She realized she’d forgotten to alert anyone of his possibly unauthorized presence. In retrospect, it dawned on her that if he was in Zezvar’s office, it meant he’d gone past those Ahmenian guards. Those hulking beings would have prevented his access if he’d had any unsavoury intentions.
He’d appeared ill. Perhaps he’d gone to Zezvar for assistance. She felt guilty at the thought her accusations might have scared him off from the medical attention he required.
Stepping through another pair of doors, she stood outside on a platform. Three, black, oval-shaped vehicles hovered over a marked and lighted track at the edge of the platform. The well-lit area added an inviting gleam on the hovercars’ sleek exterior. The front-most hovercar’s inner lights pulsed blue and a short ramp extended as she drew nearer.
She entered the hovercar and sat in the driver’s seat. Megan had said that even though they could be driven manually, they were capable of autopilot driving. The array of buttons and knobs on the panel daunted her. But if she could handle the convoluted medical simulators in school, she felt certain she could tackle this.
“Language,” she said as Megan had taught her. Mikaal had ensured all Omaron technology be upgraded with this feature. One of many ways he’d integrated his human wife’s culture into his kingdom.
The hovercar’s default language settings switched to legible English text instead of the Omaron glyphs Karen still struggled to learn. She peered at the map on the control panel’s screen.
“A quickie drive can’t hurt, right?”
She answered her own question by jabbing the screen with her finger on a location that seemed close by. In the event she got lost, at least it wouldn’t be a hardship to find her way back to the palace. She hoped.
“Auto-pilot,” she said, unsure if the hovercar would accept that command. She grinned in triumph when the hovercar vibrated gently. Its inner lights pulsed again as the ramp retracted. An invisible force strapped her in her seat and the hovercar zoomed out of the station at a break neck speed. She saw nothing but a blur outside the hood’s transparent glass.
“Slow down!” she cried out, relieved when the vehicle decreased its speed to a normal level. The palace was already a minuscule white dot in the darkness behind her. She eyed the map again and frowned. She was nowhere near the marker she’d appended to it. This map was definitely a case of ‘objects are farther away than they appear’.
Alright. She’d had enough adventure for one night. Her bed seemed a lot more appealing now when she was faced with the possibility of being lost on an alien planet.
“Take me home,” she said, but the hovercar puttered along. It veered off its main track onto another that wound through a forested area. The headlights barely cut through the cloak of thick darkness. Up ahead, a being came into view running toward her in the path of the hovercar.
Panicked, she ordered the hovercar to stop. The hovercar ground to a halt and it occurred to Karen she’d made a mistake.
Everything happened so quickly, she wasn’t sure if she’d frozen or if time had sped up at twice the speed. She gawked at the being running toward her. It was naked save for a metallic collar around its neck, its blue skin and emaciated frame spotlighted in the headlights. The blue-skinned being shouted, but the glass hood prevented her from distinguishing the words. Nevertheless, fear and panic was evident in its high-pitched voice.
And that’s when she saw them. Two bipedal, reptilian beings dressed in skin-tight black suits in pursuit, their guns pointing forward. They fired off bright red shots, the sound like soft staccato knocks on a wooden door. Karen screamed as the laser shots tore apart the blue-skinned creature in front of her. Its ink-coloured blood splattered grotesquely across the hovercar’s transparent hood.
“Go! Go!” she commanded. The hovercar resumed its pace but not fast enough. The lizard men shot at it. An error alert came to life on the screen and the vehicle juddered to a stop. The invisible force released her, the hood retracted, the doors slid open. Karen flew from the hovercar like if she’d acquired wings. Terror mounting, her vision blurred by tears, she pumped her legs. She dashed into the trees for cover from the laser shots whizzing by her. The scent of fresh grass and earthen soil surrounded her, the cool air didn’t alleviate her warm skin. She didn’t look back even as the sound of running feet pursued her. Looking back slowed you down, looking back got you killed—
Karen cried out when a solid force slammed into her back, sending her crashing face down onto the ground. Her forehead hit the tough, upraised tree root and her vision momentarily blurred. Rough hands rolled her onto her back and a beam of light chased the darkness away from her eyes. Terror left her parched, her heart slamming against her chest in time with the throbbing in her forehead.
One of the lizard men straddled her, holding a light over her face. Its skin the colour of moss, its cheeks sunken, its black eyes imbued with a malevolence Karen had never before seen in her twenty-six years of existence. The other lizard man snarled at her, and while she didn’t understand the words, she registered the threat in his voice.
He retrieved a metallic cylindrical device from his pockets. She didn’t know what it was and she didn’t care. Re-energized by fear, she squirmed and fought, struggling for escape.
“No!” Karen shouted. “No!”
Sneering, the lizard man squatted and slapped the flat of the cylinder against her neck. The device was cool against her skin and her whole body went numb. Useless. Tears of helplessness streamed down her face but she couldn’t feel them. She could no longer defend herself. The lizard man hauled her limp body up from the floor, slung her across his shoulders and carried her off into the forest’s darkness.